


The Nail

by illyriantremors



Series: Shadowsinger: An Azriel/Moriel Fic [8]
Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Death, Extremely Graphic Violence, F/M, Torture, Violence, acomaf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-15 22:42:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8075683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illyriantremors/pseuds/illyriantremors
Summary: Set in a would-be ACOTAR Book 3, Azriel is summoned to the Hewn City in the middle of war to deal with Keir who has been caught defecting to Hybern. Rhysand defers to Morrigan as to how Keir will die and it falls to Azriel to finish him off with an unexpected surprise that rattles the rest of the Squad.





	

**Author's Note:**

> There is really rather dark, graphic violence in this one involving torture and death. Ye pirates be warned. And given that, I don't know what this says about me, but this is probably the chapter I'm most proud of out of this series of fics, so I hope anyone reading this enjoys it. :)

_ We don't deal with outsiders very well. They say newcomers have a certain smell. Yeah, trust issues, not to mention they say they can smell your intentions. You're lovin' on the freak show sitting next to you. You'll have some weird people sitting next to you. You'll think, "How did I get here, sitting next to you?" But after all I've said, please don't forget. _

_ All my friends are heathens, take it slow. Wait for them to ask you who you know. Please don't make any sudden moves. You don't know the half of the abuse. _

\- Twenty One Pilots

* * *

Azriel keeps it in his pocket.

He has it stitched to the inner half of his right calf, a long stretch of dark fabric with a tiny slit at the top, imperceptible to anyone else but him. It’s buried there in the darkness. He never takes it out. He never touches it. Never so much as thinks about it unless he’s in the Court of Nightmares.

Visits to the Hewn City are the one time he allows his mind to slip. And it’s so easy to do with his prey sitting right in front of him. He could open the slit and do the deed right then, be done with it. The shadows press in on his mind urging him to do it, just like they did the first time Azriel had visited and wondered what would happen if he held Truth-Teller up to the coward’s neck.

Instead, he waits. Through battles and wars, sleep and wake, sunshine and starlight, he keeps the slit closed and the weapon covered up telling no one. It rusts. It rots. It grows old with time, but he never lets go of it, not for nearly five hundred years because he’s saving it for the day Rhysand breaks or the day Morrigan asks. He won’t touch it until someone gives him the say so. His deepest fear is that they never will, next to losing what he loves most.

So he waits quietly, patiently for that day when he’s told to take it out even when they don’t know it’s there and he can unleash his shadows in full force.

Today is that day.

* * *

It’s late by the time I finally fly into the cold mountains of the Night Court, landing at the entrance to the Court of Nightmares. The sky above has grown dark and filled with clouds. I can’t quite tell without the moonlight to show me, but I’d have been willing to bet the clouds were a deep, stormy grey given the thunderheads I’d seen while leaving the Spring Court where my men would have to stay the night without me.

Only one thing could have torn me away. Only one thing could have dragged  _ all _ of us away from the front lines of war. Everyone except Feyre who had to remain in the Spring Court even now in the thick of war to play her part. But if anyone had asked, I was glad she wouldn’t be here for what we had to do tonight. Maybe it was better she stayed away and didn’t see the monsters we’d shape ourselves into even if it was for a worthy cause.

A deeper selfish part of myself still afraid of the outside world was glad it would be just the core of us. Tonight was meant for myself, for Morrigan, Rhysand, Cassian. Cassian who greeted me on the steps of the Court of Nightmares, ready to cross over the threshold brother to brother. Feyre was blood now and I wouldn’t have had it any other way, not when I saw what having her brought to Rhysand. There was a joy to him now that had never existed before like all the holes had been filled in where war, family, and death had ripped him apart. And on her own, Feyre was tough, a fighter. She more than earned her spot with us. In a way, she reminded me of Morrigan when I’d first met her, just learning the ropes and coming into her own. I liked her.

But we had been the four who had been there when everything happened. We’d been the ones who’d had to witness the pain, the horrors, and in Morrigan’s case,  _ feel _ it all too.

When the shadows came hunting for me earlier in the morning, I’d expected news of the war, of Feyre or Rhysand or anything else but the slimy word they snaked into my ear. I swallowed that word and felt it drop into the deep recesses of my stomach where it sat squirming around uncomfortably, not sure whether I should vomit it back up or shit it straight out.

_ Keir… _

That was all the shadows had said, but it was enough. I knew what had happened. The paper with Rhysand’s writing appeared next to me a moment later. No quil. No lengthy explanation. Just two little words written in his excellent penmanship:  _ Hewn City _ .

I flew. All day, faster and harder than I ever had before save my long lone trip to the Autumn Court some five hundred years ago. Tension roiled within every sweep of my wings against the winds. A stitch pressed against my heart and the cold length of metal at my calf begged me to release it. It was anticipation. It was stress. It was anger and hurt. And it was shadow and bone and blood ready to spring out of the darkness I had been carrying around my entire life.

When I landed on that mountain, I didn’t say anything. I looked at Cassian expecting an explanation while he appraised me with a look up and down my body, his brow scrunched together.

“You look like an angel of death like that,” Cassian said, but he didn’t sound surprised to see me so wrapped up in clouds of darkness. Not today. The shadows tightened on my body just as the few I’d sent ahead came slithering back to me from within the mountain itself. A heavy, familiar fog slid over my eyes and through the dark filter of voices, the shadows showed me an empty court void of inhabitants but for the two other people who mattered to me most.

“It’s empty,” I said.

Cassian nodded. “You know Rhysand,” he said. “He likes to be dramatic.”

Thunder sounded overhead, but neither of us shook. Such theatrics were trivial to us now after the horrors we had seen. “I’m not sure I’d call this dramatic,” I mused. “He deserves it.”

Cassian sighed and it was half a smile. “Yes he does, brother. Yes he does.”

We met our High Lord in the heart of the Court of Nightmares where he normally held court. Today, the room was empty exactly as my friends had warned. I sent them back out once more not willing to trust what my eyes chronicles on their own, but the reports still came back in the negative. Not a single cretin was around for quite some distance. I only wondered if they had fled by choice in the war or some evil doing of Rhysand’s magic.

The shadows were forced to fill me in on Rhysand’s appearance as my mind became otherwise engaged. He stood tall and menacing at the center of the court. The damper on his power must have been taken off because an eerie fog had settled over the room, but unlike Rhysand’s usual bravado meant to delight and bewitch, this darkness was filled with lightning and death, a sharp mirror to the trouble brewing outside.

But I saw none of Rhsyand nor his darkness stepping inside the room. My gaze was reserved wholly for the one person this night would affect most.

She stood next to her cousin in a long luxurious dress the deepest shade of crimson. The neckline plunged far past her breasts stopping just above her navel. A blood ruby dangled from a chain of diamonds around her neck coming to a rest within that narrow opening along her stomach. And the slit on the side was a mile high up her legs.

She was a torment, my Morrigan. I couldn’t help the cruel feline grin that spread itself across my face as I drank her up. What a beautiful sight she would make in front of her father as he died. A temptress wrapped up in a pretty box the color of Keir’s blood meant to impress and inspire him with how powerful his daughter had become. What a promise and a wealth she could have been for him. What a savior for their family. And just when Keir saw her, I knew he would see it for the lie it really was. There was venom underneath that dress, not money and a maidenhead. And Morrigan would make sure every last ounce of poison she possessed would sink right into her father until he was too crippled with pain to even draw breath. I quivered at the thought.

Morrigan spotted my approach and our eyes locked. In that precise moment, I felt the world go still. The thunder wasn’t outside, it was in my heart beating just for her. And the lightning in the room wasn’t coming from Rhysand’s power, it was in my hands, itching for the sword at my back that it would spill the awful truth into the open for Keir to finally see.

So much was left between us, so much left unsaid. Five hundred years of history would come to a head tonight. I could hear her heart beating in her chest, could feel it speed up when she saw me and we both remembered the night she had almost died. I’d only gotten there just in time to bring her back exactly as she had once saved me and had continued to do so for centuries afterward.

I wanted to tell her. I wanted to scream at her every day how far I would go to keep her safe. There was nothing I wouldn’t do. My blood was hers to spill, command, and control as she willed and by the Mother, I would obey if only it wouldn’t damn us both.

Which was why I’d chosen to remain silent. It was what I’d done since the day Morrigan had woken up and asked me how to survive. Cauldron, it was so long ago, but I’d kept my promise to myself never to fail her again and that included keeping a careful distance from her even if I was never too far away. I’d kept that distance from all of them, in truth.

And it hadn’t been easy. Not for one day and especially not in the beginning. But in time, the relationships between all of us had mended. Cassian and Morrigan became steady friends content to turn their fleeting act into a one-off joke to cope with humor, though even I could see something like lost longing written in Cassian’s eyes now and then when he looked at Morrigan over the years. It wasn’t romance exactly, just a simple  _ what could have been _ had he not fucked up.

Rhysand and Morrigan’s relationship had been the quickest to heal. She didn’t rebuke him for the beating he’d given Cassian. Sometimes I got the sense she felt it was her fault in the first place, that she felt bad it had been poor Cassian who’d been home that night chosen by Fate’s cruel hand and not some random Illyrian beast. And Rhysand, despite nearly losing his cousin, wouldn’t force her to regret taking control of her own life and giving agency to her body and soul. It was easier for him to turn her into a queen over her family and his court, enabling her powers, than to let her actions continue to haunt her.

But those friendships had taken the longest to mend where I was concerned. With Rhysand, there was quiet understanding. The fact that I had been the one to go and get Morrigan erased some of the awkwardness between us and I would never forget his face as he was forced to hold me back from tearing the world apart to avenge his cousin. Sometimes, I still wondered if he  _ knew _ the truth grappling under my skin trying to get free.

With Morrigan, her trust in me was implicit from the start, but that was only because I’d saved her and we’d become friends first. She knew I’d been hurt. It was too hard to pretend I wasn’t when it had been plain as day in my eyes when I’d seen her standing behind Cassian reeking of sex and his scent. But that didn’t matter to her because I’d saved her and for that, she was never letting me go, something she made very clear and it terrified me. No matter how far I ran from her in my mind, she was always there knocking at the door, begging to be let in. She was the last one to see me off when I left court and the first one to see me home when I came back, always, always waiting for me with something like concern in her eyes.

I tried to shut it down. I told myself over and over again it was only because she felt indebted to me for what I’d done and nothing more. We were a family all four of us together, but thinking of Morrigan and myself without the others involved was an impossibility she insisted on facing down. No matter how much I shut down or put her off, she wouldn’t let me get away with it and eventually, I’d cave and take the chain off, turn the handle, and find her brown eyes staring at me through the sliver of the door I’d open just for her.

That was when it was hardest. To be so vulnerable and so close to the truth when I couldn’t have any of it was Hybern’s ash arrow flying next to my heart; it wasn’t a kill shot, but it was close enough to feel like it was. How many times had I gone there before in life only to find myself pushed back off that cliff again with no wings to save me? No High Lord’s son to swoop in and catch me at the last second? Being so close to Morrigan was more intoxicating and addicting than the high of war, but just as dangerous for my soul. I wanted her more than anything, but I’d already failed her in so many ways that I couldn’t let it happen again. She was the sun and I was a block of ice orbiting small and cold on the outer reaches.

So no matter how many times she knocked and that door cracked me open, I made sure it was firmly shut again by the night’s end.

Cassian had taken me the longest to work back into, but in some ways he had been simpler, more straightforward. For months, we didn’t say a word to each other until one day we both found ourselves in the fighting rings facing each other just as we had the day we’d met and that was it. Punches and cuts and bruises traded apologies and answers and understanding across our skin where our tongues couldn’t get the words across.

By the time the war came and we were all sent to different parts of the world without one another, only then did we realize the cuts had scabbed over and we could move on. Trust and brotherhood were rebuilt over years and years of war and separation and then some several centuries more of companionship with Rhysand in Velaris building our Court of Dreams.

And that was simply that.

“He defected,” Rhysand said and you could have cut the tension in his voice with a knife. Most people thought he was angry when the room erupted into darkness like an explosion of light and sound. But that was the High Lord’s mask. You always knew Rhysand was well and truly angry when the only indication of the beast prowling beneath his skin was that deadly call in his voice and nothing else. “Cassian brought him in from across the sea trying to get to Hybern.”

The four of us stared at each other. We knew what came next. Keir had always been a lousy piece of scum, but he kept to Rhysand’s bidding and never faulted. Now that he had abandoned ship and in just about the worst way possible, death was the penalty. And Keir probably knew it too.

It was a wonder Cassian hadn’t sliced him up the second he’d found him. I couldn’t help but to picture Keir squirming wherever Cassian had chained him up. As if he knew what I was thinking, Cassian caught my eye and subtly nodded, affirming that it wasn’t pretty and this was just the start. He was excited - we both were. It was the one death neither of us were sure to never mourn. Our silent feuding suspended in the moments while Morrigan’s life hung in the balance and we found ourselves knitted together in mutual hatred of her father. As painful as tonight would be bringing back those horrible days, all those scars we each carried from it, it would be a celebration in a way too.

The only thing left to decide was how and that was a matter of…

“Morrigan,” Rhysand said. He stepped in front of his cousin so that his back was to Cassian and I and stared solemnly down at her. He spoke, but not before his shoulders dropped in time with a tense exhale of breathe. “It’s your decision, as always.”

Morrigan’s brown eyes were tense and glossy. Her head tilted to the side as she considered Rhysand’s words. Her decision. That’s what this entire fiasco came down to: her choice. Her choice to love and live as she pleased. And her choice to kill. There was no doubt in my mind Rhysand wouldn’t allow Keir to live, but that wasn’t quite the choice he was offering her. Either she could let Keir go quickly, or she could make it horrible.

And suddenly in the midst of Morrigan’s long silence, I found myself at a loss as to what she would do. Her face looked so grieved, so conflicted that I almost doubted where this was heading. Looking past Rhysand, she looked at Cassian, then looked at me, and her back straightened, head held high. We each gave her an encouraging nod that seemed to give her the fire she needed.

I saw her eyes sharpen, the edge of  _ the _ Morrigan, our queen, flaring to life inside them. She was ready for this moment, had prepared for it for centuries. When she looked back to Rhysand, I knew what she would do. It would hurt her like hell to kill Keir despite what he’d done to her mind and body, but she was strong enough to go through with it. More importantly, she deserved it.

“Azriel,” was all Morrigan said at long last staring into her cousin’s violet eyes. I stepped forward, the shadows swimming in anticipation trying to understand what she would have of me this time. Rhysand stepped aside easily to let me by as if he knew this was coming. “Your sword,” Morrigan said as I stepped in front of her. I reached behind me and pulled Truth-Teller out of its sheath at once and held it out to her.

“It’s yours,” I said. Just as every piece of me had always been. If I was to be a blade in the night to her, then so be it.

But Morrigan touched the Illyrian sword and pushed it away from her, back towards  _ me _ . “No, Az,” she said, shaking her head. “Not me.” Her gaze was hard unrelenting steel as cruel and unyielding as my blade and it asked everything of me, sung the story of that day in the inches that separated our hearts until I was practically bleeding before her. Could I kill him for her? Would it rectify the anguish broken on my face when I’d seen her? Would it mend the little fragments of our relationship that had never quite come back to us?

Give  _ me _ the privilege, the one I had wanted since the day I took the nail from her stomach, and would it save us both?

My body stiffened while the shadows danced in gleeful suspense of the bloodshed to come. I swallowed the saliva built up on my tongue trying to erase some of the raw thickness from my throat when I spoke. “It would be my honor,” I said.  


Morrigan did not smile. “Then do it.”

* * *

Cassian moved almost immediately, slipping behind a near invisible door to fetch Keir. Rhysand returned to Morrigan’s side and took her hand. I fell back into the shadows of the court. “Ready?” Rhysand asked her.

“I was born ready,” she said and she sounded like a queen. She was one, a queen over us all, as Rhysand led her to the dais where his throne sat, stopping before it. He held her hand out towards the throne and let his own fall away so that only hers remained.

“It’s yours,” he said cooly.

“Rhysand,” Morrigan cut in with a quick snap. She seemed suddenly overcome with emotion.

“Don’t worry, I’m not  _ giving _ it to you.” A ghost of a smirk lit his lips. “But you deserve a place of honor for this. In some ways…” He cast his head downward and I knew he was thinking not just of that day, but of every day they’d fought through since. “In some ways, Mor, this throne is just as much yours now as it is mine.”

Morrigan kissed his cheek softly, her hand affectionately resting on his neck, but there was some of her usual flare in her voice when she spoke. “High Lady of the Night Court for a night? I’ll take it.”

Rhys groaned even as he stifled a chuckle. “Just don’t put it quite like that to Feyre when you tell her, alright, Mor?”

“Who says I’m the one to tell her?” Morrigan winked and Rhysand rolled his neck, shrugging away.

Morrigan sat atop the serpentine throne and absolutely came to life. The red dress on her proclaimed her birth and all the blood she’d spilt to defend that position. Her hair was a halo of light, radiating her joys and strength, her ability to find dreams in the nightmares and sunrises after the longest nights. The image she projected gave me the courage that I might get through this in one piece without completely severing the fragile threads holding me together at her feet.

Rhysand came to stand next to the throne and together, we three stared into the center of the room waiting. After a few more minutes of tense silence, the side door re-opened and Cassian kicked a bound and chained Keir through the air flying towards the center of the room in front of where Morrigan sat. He landed with a hard thud crying out behind the gag in his mouth.

When Keir managed to gather his bearings and pull himself up, he did a quick double take of Morrigan on the throne in place of Rhysand. I could have sworn I heard his heart stop beating.

“What is this?” he said trying to sound like his confident self, but the shadows sung to me the sound of the adrenaline beginning to charge through his blood like a thousand stallions rushing down a hillside at full speed.

“This is you facing me as you always should have,” Morrigan said, no trace of love or empathy in her. “This is you taking responsibility for your actions. This is your opportunity to make amends. This is your death.”

Keir sneered. “Are you saying I have a choice? Apologize or die.”

“No.” The word was dead on her lips, unchanging. So ironic for poor Keir to refuse his daughter the right to have a choice at the cost of his own choice in death at  _ her _ hands. I both saw and felt Keir’s body tense, but he couldn’t be that surprised at the outcome. “But I had hoped foolishly so even, that you might have just the smallest, tiniest,” she pinched her forefinger and thumb together so that only a narrow gap separated them, “ounce of remorse in you for all you’ve done. Pity.”

Keir spat and if this wasn’t Morrigan’s game to play, I know Rhysand would have misted him on the spot. “Be done with it then. I have no love for you.”

Morrigan’s face turned to stone as she stared at her father. It was perhaps the only feature they shared, that ability to be so cold and menacing when the call for it came in. Beyond that, my imagination failed me to understand how the Cauldron had created such an angel of mercy and grace out the grotesque demon kneeling before us.

“Begin,” Morrigan commanded. Keir looked somewhat confused when Morrigan didn’t move thinking she would be the one to end him swift and painlessly. I was delighted when I stepped out of the shadows and saw Keir’s head turn in my direction, a look of abject terror striking him. I watched his eyes slide back to Morrigan and when he did, she gave him a serpentine grin. “This might hurt a little bit,” she said with deadly grace.

One look at Cassian and he nodded, going up to Keir and dragging him from the floor. A chair appeared from thin air and Keir was shoved onto it as Cassian shackled him to it, the chains negating his ability to winnow away. “Strip him,” I said and before Cassian could so much as move for his clothes, Rhysand had them misted away on the wind his darkness produced and Keir was naked and exposed for all of us to see.

I pulled a small simple knife from within the pocket of my sleeve just below the wrist and stood in front of Keir. He glared at me trying hard to ignore the knife. I saw his toes curl, the only visible sign of his agitation. He would show me a lot more by the time I was through with him. “Shadowsinger,” he said with such disgust. “That blade’s a bit smaller than the one you’re used to, isn’t it? Am I not  _ worthy _ of your precious Illyrian-”

The words literally died on his lips as I shoved the blade into his mouth and slashed it cleanly to one side so that his cheek was cut through from the corner of where his lips met all the way across one side of his face. A vomit-inducing flap of skin curled down over his chin and a blood-curdling cry split the room.

“No, you’re not worthy of it,” I said in a monotone voice, leaning over with either hand on the arms of the chair even as Keir’s body flailed with the pain ravaging his face. His hands spasmed trying to break free and go to the wound. It was sadistic in reality, but his fear made me giddy and glad of what I’d learn in the Illyrian mountains all those years. Blood dripped off his cheek and onto my hands. I swirled it around between my fingers, relishing the feel of his death on the cold of my skin.

I lifted the knife up to the flap of cheek hanging off of him and pushed at it with the sharp tip of my knife. “Ooh,” I said blowing hot air over the cut, my voice still flat. “That doesn’t look so good.”

With what little movement his jaw could make, Keir choked trying to say something. The words couldn’t make it past his exposed teeth.

“If you think this is going to be over quickly,” I said, leaning to whisper into his ear. “Then you’re in for a nasty shock. Do you remember, Keir? Do you remember what you did to her?” I ran the knife over his chest allowing his blood to smear off of it and leave a bloody trail behind. Keir gave a muffled sob. “Because I do. I remember  _ everything _ .”

The knife sliced into the skin high on his abdomen, just deep enough that it hurt beyond the pain of a simple papercut, but shallow enough to avoid muscle and ensure that he would be conscious for a very long time.

“I remember every cut....” I dragged the knife a little further and Keir moaned, his body going rigid as he tried to resist. “Every burn…” A decent inch of skin came away this time and I flicked it off the knife and onto the ground where it fell at Cassian’s feet. Keir stared horrified as Cassian stepped on the skin and smushed it with his shoe as if it were a worm squirming in the mud after a rainstorm. Keir whimpered and when my knife again met his chest to carve away more skin, the scream that emanated from his mouth was horrifying.

Horrifying to everyone except the four of us standing in this room. Electric screams and near-silent words continued for some time.

“Every hole, every mark, every scar - I remember  _ all _ of them. I counted. Did you know that?” Keir shook his head, tears streaming down his face as his eyes screamed shut. I grabbed him by his hair and shoved his face down. “Open your eyes, Keir,” I said, maintaining that dangerous calm in my voice. “Open them and  _ look _ .”

Keir obeyed and gave a pitiful moan at the sight of his stomach laid raw, the muscle exposed in most places howling at the pain of open air on the fibres. I looked at Rhysand and he nodded, his hands in his pockets casually already manipulating Keir’s mind to keep him awake.

“Do you see red yet?” I asked. “All I saw at first was red. Your daugher, covered in nothing but blood. It took a while to distinguish the handiwork underneath it all, but when I did...” I pushed the tip of the knife into a particularly exposed stretch of skin above where his bellybutton should have been, but no longer was. Keir screamed.

“She had a cut here and it dragged all the way across, like this.” My knife retraced the first wound I’d found on her perfect skin and then moved to a fresh spot below the line. “And there were these beautiful holes in her - here, here, and here.” I darted the knife in and out in rapid succession, recreating the punctures from the Mother only knew what instruments he had used. “And just below that were these gnarled bits of flesh that had become pockmarked and raw from where you burned her.”

I dove the knife into the muscle and wrenched it away. Keir’s insides became visible and he cried out in excruciating pain, but one look at the loathing on Rhysand’s face and I knew Keir wasn’t going to fade away anytime soon.

I stood up and I dropped the knife. It made a faint  _ clink! _ when it hit the stone floor, the only sound for miles in the mountain save for Keir’s wails. “But my favorite, the one I’ll never forget,” I said, allowing the wrath I’d felt that day to finally creep up into my voice, “was sitting just above her hips.” I reached down to my calf and started to undo the pocket where I kept  _ it _ , burning alive against the fabric of me for years and years and years. When I pulled the nail that I’d found buried in Morrigan’s stomach out of my pocket, the room went very, very still.

I heard Morrigan gasp and looked up to see the most pained expression on her face. She was staring back and forth between me and the nail in my hand, stunned into silence. Her mouth hung open and I could see a single tear fall down her beautiful red cheeks. Rhysand grabbed her hand, his usually perfectly composed face now strained. Cassian’s own mirrored him.

Never had I told them I’d kept it. I didn’t know what they would think of me if they’d found out. It was the freak in me, the masochistic demon hellbent on revenge and blood who lived in the shadows so much that he was one himself, that kept the nail. Not their friend. Not their brother. Never the lover and never the victor. Just the Shadowsinger alone in the darkness hoarding his secret wants and wishes like an unfulfilled dream that could never come alive.

They were my life, these three people. I couldn’t share all of the horrors the shadows brought to me. They had their own problems to worry about. Burdening them with my own when they were so much denser and twisted would have been a cruel betrayal to lay at their feet and a poor way to repay them for taking me in and fixing me when I was ready to die.

Some nights when I flew home to Velaris with so much blood on my person and shadows in my ears I couldn’t see straight, I would remember what it felt like the day Devlon hurled me off that cliff and I thought I was going to die. And I would wonder what it would be like if my wings suddenly just... stopped moving and I fell again. No one would be there to catch me and the world would end in permanent darkness where I’d been born.

But I would come home and Morrigan would smile and Cassian would hand me a drink and Rhysand would smirk with all of his self-assured arrogance and Amren would scowl and we would find a way to laugh again and make the world feel like a better place to live in, one with enough space not just for them but for me too. And my wings would flap before I could hit the ground and I would go home to them cursing myself for ever thinking even for a single second that I could leave.

I couldn’t toss those demons onto this family. Never. I swore it the day Morrigan opened her eyes and looked at me with such a desperate will to live. Had she died, all of that would have gone away and it was entirely Keir’s fault.

Stooping down so that I rested on the balls of my feet, I took Morrigan’s trust and Cassian’s lionheart and Rhysand’s tireless hope and I made Keir face it in my eyes. The filter of black passed through my vision and I knew Keir could see the shadows stalking him with the message to be afraid.  _ Be ready to feel everything _ , they rallied.  _ Be ready to die _ .

“You hammered a nail into her  _ stomach _ ,” I said, my voice shaking. I lifted the nail for him to see it. “This nail.” Keir started to tremble, his entire body sobbing with fear of what he’d been begging me for over the last hour, but still I dragged it out, needing him to know the truth, to feel everything I felt. “You wasted the most beautiful gift to ever walk this earth for the sake of blood and money.”

I jerked his face towards the throne, my fingers plunging painfully over the torn skin of his cheek and savored the last few whimpers I would hear from him. My hand holding the nail pointed at Morrigan.  _ “Do you see her?” _ I demanded. “Even after all these centuries, do you realize what you lost? And for what?  _ This?” _

I waved the nail in front of him and realized I’d been suddenly shouting. But I couldn’t help it. I loved her. I loved Morrigan. I loved her beyond the sun and stars and moon and everything I thought she was because in reality she was the universe itself granting me the privilege of taking up some small infinitesimal space within her being. She kept me together and allowed me to live and breathe and do all the things I thought myself incapable of, spinning me back to life after every mission and wound and fall until I was more than a simple semblance of shadow and smoke.

Keir looked at me slumped in the chair, his body slowing down as he reached his breaking point and I knew that if not for Rhysand’s grip on his mind forcing him to stay present, he would have been long gone by this point.

“If this is what you wanted so badly all along,” I said gripping the nail in front of him, “then here, you can have it.”

And with that, I grabbed his cock between my free hand and shoved the nail deep inside of it, garnering the last cries of anguish from Keir before his head fell backwards on the seat of the chair and his body came to a rushing halt. Truth-Teller found its way into my hands and though Keir didn’t deserve her, I would spill the truth of his blood with the blade as I always had, even on that day I’d found Morrigan dying in the forest. The shadows whispered every last agonizingly slow, quiet beat inside his chest.  


Finally, I shoved the sword into his heart and then Keir was no more.

xx

 


End file.
